Obama ties right-to-work to cliff

President Barack Obama used a trip to Michigan Monday to tie a proposed new state right-to-work bill to the fiscal cliff negotiations, accusing Republicans of putting politics ahead of Americans’ needs in both.

“We’ve got to get past this whole situation where we manufacture crises because of politics,” Obama said. “It actually leads to less certainty, more conflict, and we can’t all focus on coming together to grow.”

Obama traveled to the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Redford Township, Mich., as part of his ongoing tour to rally support for his position on the fiscal cliff. But he said the argument for raising tax rates as part of that deal is part of the same philosophy as resisting Gov. Rick Snyder’s attempts to change the state law to weaken the ability of unions to collectively bargain.

“Folks from our state’s capital, all the way to the nation’s capital, they should be focused on the same thing,” Obama said. “They should be working to make sure that companies like this manufacturer is able to make more great products.”

Organized labor has declared an all-out war to stop the GOP bill from becoming law, and Michigan’s congressional delegation met Monday with the governor to ask him to reconsider his stance. But Obama’s visit to Michigan comes just one day before both houses of the legislature are set to approve a bill that would turn Michigan — home of the powerful United Autoworkers Union and site of some of the most pitched labor battles in U.S. history — into a right-to-work state.

Obama said that was unacceptable.

“These so called right-to-work laws, they don’t have to do with economics, they have to do with politics,” Obama said, to thunderous applause by the Daimler company’s unionized workforce. “What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.”

Labor activists and supporters are planning another day of protests in Michigan’s capital, Lansing.

“We should do everything we can to encourage companies like Daimler to keep investing in American workers,” Obama said. “What we shouldn’t be doing is try to take away your rights to bargain for better wages.”

Obama said that gutting union labor rights and passing an unbalanced deficit package were about racing American workers to the bottom. “There’s always going to be some other country that can treat its workers even worse,” Obama said.